On a bad day you also don’t need a lot of advice. You just need a little empathy and affirmation. You need to feel once again that other people have confidence in you.
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Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
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In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioral research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misunderstood this relationship was entirely according to these creatures’ plans.
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Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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With the divorce rate up to sixty per cent, how can anyone attend a wedding with a straight face anymore? I see lovers walking hand in hand, looking at each other as if nobody else was alive on the earth, and I can’t help thinking that in a year, more or less, they’ll each be with someone new. Or else nursing broken hearts. True, most lovers don’t work at it hard enough, or with enough imagination or generosity, but even those who try don’t seem to have any ultimate success these days. Who knows how to make love stay?
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Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
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I never intended to rescue you. We’re our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.
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Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
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That is why virtually every revolution in history has failed: the oppressed, as soon as they seize power, turn into the oppressors, resorting to totalitarian tactics to “protect the revolution.” That is why minorities seeking the abolition of prejudice become intolerant, minorities seeking peace become militant, minorities seeking equality become self-righteous, and minorities seeking liberation become hostile…
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Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
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Who does have a love life anymore? These days people have sex lives, not love lives. Lots of them are even giving up sex. I don’t have a love life because I’ve never met a man who knew how to have a love life. Maybe I don’t know how, either.
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Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
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Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.
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Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
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Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.”
That was all, and then she was gone. It was one of those moments when we suddenly recall a dream that we’ve unaccountably forgotten, and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep. It was the dream she’d tried to describe to Atal, the night picture; but as Mary tried to find it again, it dissolved and drifted apart, just as these presences did in the open air. The dream was gone.
All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.
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Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass (via rileyanne)
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There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
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Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (via paintmysilence)
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